Treasury, IRS use analytical software to spot patterns on the money trail

When a suburban Virginia resident began transferring money to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, federal agents took notice, and began tracking the pattern and destinations of his wire transfers. Last year, the man, Rahim Bariek, was convicted of receiving and transferringwithout a licenseabout $5 million to Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, said IRS-Criminal Investigation officials. Investigators couldnt have broken this case, or other similar ones, without robust applications that analyze trends and patterns in large amounts of financial data. The type of data agencies require from banks and other financial institutions under the Bank Secrecy Act hasnt changed, but the volume has increased because Congress has required more industries to provide information. Investigating agencies, such as the Treasury Departments Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and IRS-CI, use analytic software that can dig deeper and more broadly through the sea of data to discern patterns of money laundering and terror financing.